Making Money From A Content Site

Selling Newsletter Advertising

Another way to generate revenue for your site is to sell advertising in your newsletter/e-zine. Once you pass the 1000 subscriber mark you can start publicizing (on your site and in the newsletter itself) that ad space is available. Advertisements in newsletters are usually much more expensive than standard banner ads, although this depends on how many ads you have in your newsletter. You'll have to make a few important decisions before you start selling advertising:

1.) Size restrictions for the ads. How many lines can the ad be? How many characters per line?

2.) Will you have 1-2 ads per newsletter, or a whole bunch of dirt cheap classified ads?

3.) How much will you charge for advertising? A good rule of thumb is that on a CPM basis all the advertising in the newsletter will bring in twice as much money than a standard 468 x 60 Banner on your site. For example, if you sell 468 x 60 banner ads on your site at $20 CPM then you should be making $40 CPM from your newsletter. You could get that $40 CPM by having one ad in your newsletter for $40 CPM, two ads at $20 CPM, four ads at $10 CPM etc.

What to do with unsold advertising space

1.) Trade it with sites that complement yours. This is a great way to increase traffic to your site.

2.) Fill it with self promotional ads, advertising specific sections of your site to which you want to draw more traffic to.

3.) Run a banner advertising the fact that advertising space is available on your site.

4.) Bonus the space to advertisers at no extra cost. Not only will they be happy to receive the extra exposure around your network, but they will also be much more likely to renew their advertising campaign in the future.

Some Final Words

Think like a Business person. Selling advertising is just like selling any other product or service and standard sales and marketing techniques apply.

More Information and Resources:

Ad Resource - Lots of information about ad rates and the like.

Online Advertising Discussion List - This great daily discussion list is an invaluable source of information about the online advertising industry.

Internet Advertising Discussion List - A great place to learn more about selling advertising, Rich Media, 3rd Party Ad Serving and more.

ClickZ - Media Selling - I highly recommend that you read all past archives to this column and subscribe to receive it via email. It's an invaluable resource.

ClickZ - Profitable Online Publishing - The name says it all. Read every last article that's archived and subscribe to receive future columns via email.

How to Find Advertisers for Your E-Zine and Website

8 Steps to Developing Ad Revenue from Your Site